circuitfarmer

It’s an awful mix of half-assed approaches to things. Awkward syntax on everything and very poor at recognizing what types of data it is handling.

Open a CSV in a fresh Excel install. It will almost certainly mistake something for a date if the CSV is sufficiently large (unless the user is exceedingly explicit at changing settings for that particular CSV). It will reformat that data as a date, and as an added bonus, since Autosave is on by default, it’ll save that reformatted data back into your CSV. Yes, settings can be changed to avoid these things. But why isn’t it just designed better so as to avoid it altogether?

If that was just a natural side effect of spreadsheet apps, I could understand it. But LibreOffice Calc is a million times better at recognizing what types of data it is handling, so it seems to just be Excel’s shittiness.

The fact that it also hasn’t really changed beyond aesthetics since 2004 is just… wild.

Excel?! Have to respectfully disagree on that one.

Ah yes, you’re right.

I guess a better qualifier might be: closed-source Microsoft products tend overwhelmingly to suck.

For your sacrifices, I salute you

Is there a Microsoft product that isn’t?

To be fair, Teams is pretty bad even for MS. I’ve never seen something do so relatively little and still perform so poorly. When I switched jobs and got to use Slack it was like a great fog being lifted off of my being.

This is why claiming to be a “prophet” (by any of a multitude of definitions) is so popular for cult leaders.

You can say you have information from a deity, one way or another, or even that you get special treatment from a deity. No special powers needed. If people believe in the deity and they believe you were chosen by that deity, to counteract that would mean counteracting the belief in the deity itself.

This is the only corporate game left. Convince clueless investors that they’ll make more money if they give you money. No real innovation or even a real goal. Just buzzword after buzzword to get those investors on board.

Capitalism doesn’t breed innovation. It eventually eats it.

I’d like to think some things will change once not every major investor is clueless after just being rich their whole lives, but given how generational wealth works, I’m not holding my breath.

Thank you thank you thank you. This is exactly what I want on Lemmy.

We’ve gone from alternative facts to alternative reality.

I have considered looking into this. Building one’s own TV might be the move.

Have you done it, and if so, any tips?

I mean, they say both things.

My advice is never use a smart tv of any kind.

It is getting harder and harder to find a dumb TV though.

It is biased towards the rich. Much of American society and laws are biased towards the rich or biased towards large corporations.

So it is insane, but since it’s just as insane as the rest of the system, you aren’t supposed to notice.

Did they ever ramp down?

Especially when creators find interesting ways to work them in, which is pretty often, in my experience. They’re the one type of ad that doesn’t annoy me.

Especially considering they were explicitly designed NOT for that purpose. Not only is it illegal for government agencies to deny you anything if you refuse to provide an SSN, but until 1972, this verbiage was printed on every Social Security card: “FOR SOCIAL SECURITY PURPOSES – NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION.”

They all just invest enough effort to squeeze out some short term profits, earn their bonuses and then leave for another company to do it all again.

Amazon is not at all alone in this. Much of 2024 capitalism, at least within the tech space, works like this pretty much everywhere.

It is entirely possible to use a Kindle for epub only (that is, never “buy” a book from Amazon). There are lots of epub around, including from places like Gutenberg.

Additionally, the Libby app allows you to use your Kindle in conjunction with your local library’s electronic collection, which (in my case) is quite sizable and allows you to “borrow” DRMd books for a finite amount of time.

Ich auch

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” exists exactly for this, I think.